EDITORIAL | The donkey cart donation may have been practical, but it’s still a cop-out

There seems to be a lack of education and knowledge about basic human rights, service delivery and the obligations of government when it comes to North West villagers who last week celebrated receiving donations of donkey carts from the department of transport.

While the rest of the country is calling for better infrastructure in the form of well-maintained, pothole-free roads, in the Dibono and Manwana village outside Mahikeng where tarred roads are a foreign concept, transport MEC Sello Lehari delivered 20 donkey carts to the community to cater for their nonexistent roads.

These donkey carts, the department proudly said, were meant to ferry the community to the clinic, transport local children to schools which all lie more than 20km away, help pensioners reach their pension paypoints and even work as a transport service for villagers on their shopping trips.

After mass criticism of the project, Lehari’s office released a five-minute video where the beneficiaries thanked the government, saying the carts were a practical solution to their needs. Councillor Tshepiso Moshabi came in defence of government, saying those who criticised the donation were the middle class who did not understand the circumstances and way of living in the villages.

Moshabi mentioned how 90% of the community was unemployed, did not have cars, would not afford fuel anyway and said he hoped government would return with more cart donations in future.

But if donkey carts are the only way source of reliable transport in this area, Lehari, who probably arrived at the village in an air-conditioned car, should have hung his head in shame and perhaps even considered resigning because he has failed in his mandate to improve the transport infrastructure of these communities.

When TimesLIVE Premium ran the article on the donation, scores of people, including opposition parties expressed their outrage and labelled the carts as an insult to the poor. But what is even more disheartening is knowing this is nothing new.

In 2018, TimesLIVE Premium sister publication, Sowetan, wrote about how the department of transport, under a different MEC, also donated donkey carts to the Madibe Makgabane village. At the time, villagers said the carts would create business opportunities as recipients planned to use these to collect and sell water in the community which did not have running water.

Their actions can be likened to making a mockery of the poverty people are living in by suggesting that this is what they were used to anyway.

Back then, communities said their biggest worry was that their donkeys were being stolen and killed for their skin which was booming on the Chinese market.

Instead of addressing the scarcity of water, then premier Supra Mahumapelo said there would be a memorandum of understanding that would be signed by China and its North West counterparts to start a donkey-breeding export business to protect the donkeys of the villages.

Years later and the North West government has again missed the opportunity to restore the dignity of their villagers by providing them with decent roads. Instead, their actions can be likened to making a mockery of the poverty people are living in by suggesting this is what they were used to anyway.

While we are not opposed to creative solutions to help rural communities, these should be progressive and move towards development.

The chief, Kgosi Mpho Tawana, mentioned how children in the villages had at times missed school because the scholar transport provided by the department of education could not make it into their villages because of the road conditions. There are no taxis and buses and villagers need to travel by foot or donkey cart 20km to get to an area where they can access public transport. The carts are also used as an ambulance service to ferry the ill to the clinic. All this in 2022.

In the North West legislature, besides Lehari, there sits an education MEC, a health, social development and even rural development MEC, all of whom have portfolios which are affected in one way or another by the lack of roads and development in these villages, but shockingly, such an initiative was still passed and implemented while they observed. It’s an indictment on all of them.